School Desegregation Research Articles

A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation by Rachel Louise Martin (review)

A Most Tolerant Little Town: The Explosive Beginning of School Desegregation by Rachel Louise Martin (review)

School desegregation by redrawing district boundaries.

Schools in the United States remain heavily segregated by race and income. Previous work demonstrates districts can promote group diversity within their schools with policies like redrawing attendance zones. Yet, the promise of such policies in many areas is limited by the fact that most school segregation occurs between school districts, and not between schools in the same district. I adapt Markov Chain Monte Carlo algorithms from legislative redistricting to redraw school district boundaries that decrease segregation while maintaining desirable criteria like distance to school and using only existing school facilities. Focusing on New Jersey, where the segregation of Black and Hispanic students from White and Asian students is among the worst in the country, I demonstrate that redrawing school districts could reduce more than 40% of existing segregation in the median New Jersey county, compared to less than 5% for redrawing attendance zones alone. Finally, I show how my proposed methodology can be applied to as few as two districts to reduce segregation in proposed consolidations, when small districts are merged into a larger district.

Barbara Johns and Beyond: Black Male Youth Activists, School Desegregation, and the Black Freedom Struggle in Virginia, 1951–1970

Barbara Johns and Beyond: Black Male Youth Activists, School Desegregation, and the Black Freedom Struggle in Virginia, 1951–1970

The Construction and Negotiation of Social Identities Following a School Desegregation Initiative in Sweden

ABSTRACT Swedish schools are highly segregated along the lines of non-im/migrants and im/migrants and their descendants. In this study we explored the processes involved in the negotiation of social identities following a school desegregation initiative in Sweden, aimed to create schools with more heterogeneous student bodies. We conducted 58 interviews with students and school staff at the closing and receiving schools, before and following the initiative. Drawing on identity theories at the intersection of macro- and micro-levels, we a) descriptively explored the identity labels at each level, and b) analyzed how these identities were negotiated in relation to prevailing power hierarchies. Results showed macro-level identities related to nationality, background, and overarching norms and narratives, while micro-level identities included labels related to “old” and “new” schools/classes/friends, to in-groups based on differences in language proficiency, academic levels, and social needs. The initiative triggered identity negotiation for all students. However, while students already attending the receiving schools mainly negotiated identities at the micro-level, the dispersed students had to (re)negotiate their identities in relation to both the macro- and micro-levels. Thematic analyses showed four themes of macro-micro negotiations: rejection, accommodation, positioning, and conditioning, where identities at one level restricted possible identities at the other level.

Who We are is Who We were: Policy Moves that Shape a District

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to provide the historical and sociopolitical context of an urban midwestern district, and track how the policy churn over time has been influenced by racism and white supremacy and continues to shape policymaking in the district. We use critical policy analysis to review historical documents, encompassing six decades, to interrogate how the district’s past policy moves inform their need and ability to pursue racial equity. We support our document analysis with semi-structured interviews with district leaders. Our findings demonstrate that a number of strategic moves, including school desegregation and the charter movement, have influenced the district’s racial equity focus. The study has implications for the participating district as well as other districts attempting lasting systemic change.

:Transforming the Elite: Black Students and the Desegregation of Private Schools

:<i>Transforming the Elite: Black Students and the Desegregation of Private Schools</i>

The Impact of School Desegregation on White Individuals’ Racial Attitudes and Politics in Adulthood

Abstract In this paper I study how school desegregation by race following Brown v. Board of Education affected White individuals’ racial attitudes and politics in adulthood. I use geocoded nationwide data from the General Social Survey and difference-in-differences to identify causal impacts. Integration significantly reduced White individuals’ political conservatism as adults in the U.S. South but not elsewhere. I observe similar effect heterogeneity for attitudes towards Black individuals and policies promoting racial equity, but (positive) impacts and geographic variation are smaller in magnitude relative to those observed for conservatism. Investigations into mechanisms suggest that this heterogeneity may depend on the effectiveness of integration policies. In the south, White–Black exposure was greater following desegregation, and White disenrollment was lower. Finally, I demonstrate that results are robust to concerns of bias resulting from potential non-random in- and out-mobility of individuals into integrating contexts. My study provides the first causal evidence on how theories concerning intergroup contact and racial attitudes (i.e., the contact hypothesis) may have applied to school contexts following historical court mandates to desegregate.

Opportunities for teacher learning in teaching difficult histories: a social theory of learning perspective

ABSTRACT This study examined the learning trajectory of five US humanities teachers when navigating learning to teach the difficult history of school desegregation within a context of a six-month inquiry-based professional development. The research questions were: What do teachers frame as problems when teaching difficult histories? How do they reconceptualize and resolve the problems in a teacher community? The primary data included video recordings of small group discussions, where each teacher contributed lesson ideas for feedback from fellow teachers. Analysis drew from three modes of belonging, in conjunction with four dimensions of historical inquiry. The findings revealed that teachers often identified problems in teaching school desegregation by emphasizing issues related to teaching perspectives. However, through collaborative interactions with their colleagues, they were able to resolve these challenges. This was achieved by clarifying teaching goals, renegotiating the meanings of learning tasks, and selecting appropriate resources.

“That Fight Still Goes On”: Narratives of Integration and Activism

Discussions of Black history and school desegregation in many K-12 schools have been narrowed to a few heroic figures and moments. Historic representations are currently challenged by a nationwide movement to uphold White supremacy and deny the violent history of racism in the US. The revisionist claims are challenged in this qualitative narrative research project that presents stories gathered from 10 Black educators in Augusta, Georgia, who recount their stories of desegregating schools and institutions as students or educators. This oral history narrative project imagines these stories as the basis for engaging K-12 teachers and students in creating new curricula.

The Tragedy of School Desegregation

Abstract The Crucible of Desegregation: the Uncertain Search for Educational Equality details the legal, social, and political history of school desegregation over the last century and half. The author describes the creation of the civil rights state, at the state and federal level, the continuing ambiguity of the term desegregation, the lack of support for mandatory reassignment by Black parents, the reluctance of school officials to apply for a termination of their court order, the effect of terminating school desegregation orders on racial balance and interracial exposure, and the failure of school desegregation to achieve the lofty goals its supporters pursued, of which eliminating the Black-white achievement gap was the most important.

Struggling to Learn: An Intimate History of School Desegregation in South Carolina

Struggling to Learn: An Intimate History of School Desegregation in South Carolina

Busing to Opportunity? The Impacts of the Metco Voluntary School Desegregation Program on Urban Students of Color

Busing to Opportunity? The Impacts of the Metco Voluntary School Desegregation Program on Urban Students of Color

Busing to Opportunity? The Impacts of the Metco Voluntary School Desegregation Program on Urban Students of Color

Busing to Opportunity? The Impacts of the Metco Voluntary School Desegregation Program on Urban Students of Color

Desegregation is Not a Black and White Issue: Latino Advocacy for Equal Schooling before and after Brown

AbstractThis article argues for the importance of reframing the history of school desegregation in the United States beyond Black and white and beyond the regional frames through which this history has been interpreted. In Western states, most Latino children attended schools segregated not by law but by custom starting in the early twentieth century; Latino students also encountered de facto segregation in the Eastern and Midwestern cities with large Puerto Rican populations by the 1950s. Parents, students, advocates, and activists protested the inequality of educational outcomes for Latino children over many decades, developing distinctive strategies to address the combination of racial and language-based discrimination faced by Latino students. Yet, because they were marginalized in political debates in the 1960s and 1970s and because most national-level historical scholarship on school desegregation focuses on Black and white participants, Latinos’ role in this aspect of our national civil rights history has remained obscured.

Review: Racial Uncertainties: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation, and the Making of Race in Post-Civil Rights America, by Danielle R. Olden

Review: <i>Racial Uncertainties: Mexican Americans, School Desegregation, and the Making of Race in Post-Civil Rights America</i>, by Danielle R. Olden

Book Review: Struggling to Learn: An Intimate History of School Desegregation in South Carolina

Book Review: Struggling to Learn: An Intimate History of School Desegregation in South Carolina

Book review: all through the town: the school bus as educational technology

Book review: all through the town: the school bus as educational technology

State-level desegregation in the U.S. South and mid-life cognitive function among Black and White adults

RationaleBlack adults experience worse cognitive function than their White peers. Although educational attainment is an important predictor of cognitive function, other aspects of education, including school desegregation, may also shape this relationship. For Black adults who grew up in the U.S. South in the 1950s–1970s, exposure to school desegregation may have altered life course pathways critical for later cognitive function. ObjectiveWe determined if state variation in exposure to school desegregation in the U.S. South was associated with cognitive function at mid-life, if the association varied by race, and if the association remained after adjustment for state-level education quality and respondents’ educational attainment. MethodsWe linked historical data on state-level school desegregation to the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults aged 50 and older. We restricted our sample to Black (n = 1443) and White (n = 1507) adults born between 1948 and 1963 who resided in the U.S. South during primary school. We assessed three cognition outcomes: total cognitive function, episodic memory, and mental status. We estimated race-stratified linear regression models with cluster adjustment and a final model using state fixed effects. ResultsGreater exposure to desegregated primary schooling was associated with higher cognitive function and episodic memory among Black but not White adults. Among Black adults, the association between school desegregation and cognitive function and episodic memory remained after adjustment for state-level education quality and educational attainment. ConclusionsOur findings suggest that state-level school desegregation efforts played a consequential role in shaping the cognitive function of Black adults who grew up in the U.S. South.

“Out of the Mouths of Babes”: Testimonies of Black Student Experiences in a Modern-Day Segregation Academy

While many studies have examined the historic and modern impacts of school desegregation legislation on the schooling experiences of Black students in public schools, few have examined the racialized nature of private religious schools. To address this gap, this study explored the experiences of Black, middle school students attending a “modern-day segregation academy,” a contemporary private Christian school whose beginnings can be traced to the implementation of school desegregation legislation. Framed in BlackCrit theory, findings suggest the school reproduced a climate of antiblackness that permeated school culture, curriculum, peer interactions, and pedagogy. In response, Black students implemented various acts of subversive agency to maintain joy, humanity, and faith. This study reinforces the importance of racially affirming spaces, and necessitates the development of pedagogies, practices and policies that honor the spirit of Black students, in all school settings.

The Long-Run Impacts of Mexican American School Desegregation

We present the first quantitative analysis of the impact of ending de jure segregation of Mexican American schoolchildren in the United States by examining the effects of the 1947 Mendez v. Westminster court decision on long-run educational attainment for Hispanics and non-Hispanic Whites in California. Our identification strategy relies on comparing individuals across California counties that vary in their likelihood of segregating and across birth cohorts that vary in their exposure to the Mendez court ruling based on school start age. Results point to a significant increase in educational attainment for Hispanics who were fully exposed to school desegregation. (JEL H75, I24, J13, J15, K10, N32, R23)